Hatching hens

Ever seen a cat and a hen together?  Do they get on?  We're kitten sitting, minding son and fiancée's (yes, they're engaged  and marrying in October) two cats, one of whom, Diana, has had a litter of four only a couple of weeks ago and we're minding them for the bank holiday weekend.

I've been brooding on the idea of having hens for some time.  I first had the thought put into my head years ago, when daughter's nursery school teacher commented that since we'd extended the garden, we now had enough room to have a few hens.  More recently I've been working with a colleague who keeps hens, http://connectedpeasant.blogspot.co.uk/ and recommends them.  

After watching this video, I realised I had never held a hen, so I went on a chicken keeping course (a hen party) where I got to see all sorts of breeds of hens, lots of hutches, learned what to feed them, and held hens.
Then, I had to get something for them to live in.  That took a lot of thought, with people advising me to go for a cheap but less easy to clean option - the wooden hutch. Such people don't realise that we don't have running water and a hose pipe in our garden.  We do have a well but it's not usable because the pump handle's broken, and we make do with the modern fad for water barrels, some of which collect old ivy leaves or breed mosquito larva.

I wanted an Omlet Eglu but someone advised us to get a hutch that we didn't have to bend down for.  Then Omlet brought out this high rise one.  So that's what we got.  Here is how you might put it together:

Then we went to a local breeder and selected some chickens. So now we have three young hens, red, white and blue.  We'll wait for them to settle and we're told they'll start to lay eggs in a few weeks.

The adventures start.  Yesterday evening, I wanted to put them away, and they haven't yet learnt to go up their ladder into their hutch so I have to put them in.  I caught the blue and put her in round the back, then the red, and put her in, but before I got the back door shut the blue was out!  More adventurous than I'd realised, she was off!  I grabbed the white, put her away and closed all doors before I went in chase of Belle the blue.  First she went off down the bottom of the garden, which could have been a disaster for catching her, but I managed to head her off again towards the house and the top pond, where I realised was fenced (to stop grandchildren falling in).  With husband's help, we chased her into a corner, pulling the fencing round behind her, until she was stuck between a water barrel and a window.  On the other side of the window, Diana, the cat was watching.   Diana was up on the glass, hen and cat were scared and intrigued by each other.  I grabbed the hen. "Squarhelp!" What a squawk!

I guess hens and cats have a mutual agreement - they watch each other, but keep away - that way, they'll get on.

Buskers

Bascherdeis means busker festival. In Vernasca, they have this festival with twenty or thirty street artists performing over two days. Like Afro Jungle Jeegs.

Watch some of my videos of the performers.
One man band
2. Ready for the acrobats

3. Afro jumbo jeegs
but this is the end of the show, which was 20 minutes, so too long to put on youtube until I've edited it.

4. Jugglers

Last of Isle of Wight

On Friday we visited Dimbola, a photographic museum commemorating Mrs Julia Cameron, an early portrait photographer of the mid nineteenth century. She worked with Tennyson too, to illustrate some of his romantic poetry. Tennyson had lived on the IoW, so I read some of the "Lady of Shallot" to grand daughter, glanced at Ulysses and enjoyed the rhythm of the "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

We came back via Winchester stopping off to visit the cathedral, and heard before we saw some wonderful drummers.

Isle of Wight visit

Thursday was our nicest day on the island, starting with a gentle walk over the Downs to the battery, somewhat slowly because grand daughter had a tummy ache so bent double like an old lady with osteoporosis and a sack of potatoes on her back. We sang "The Battle of Waterloo" to get us marching. She cheered up when we reached the chairlifts (videoed when I can get YouTube to accept my upload) and she sketched the needles while her brother threw stones into the sea. Grandpa searched for different coloured chalks from the cliff for her to experiment sketching with. Then we walked back over the downs. We met a man with a bouncy dog. It ran circles round grandson, whilst the man announced that the dog was frightened of children. It didn't look frightened of grandson; it looked like it wanted to play and it ran more circles round him, while he got more and more nervous. Then the poor child fell over. Man called dog, stroked his nose gently and murmured lovingly "bad dog". Grandson picked himself up, covered with dusty chalk, a bit bruised and he bit his lip. He nearly cried, but he is so plucky, and we told him so. Plucky was another new word that we'd collected that day. Plucky grandson.

In the afternoon we went down to Freshwater Bay, a pebbly but pleasant beach and the sun came out. An elderly woman was collecting seaweed. Yesterday on 'The Apprentice' the competitors had been collecting seaweed to make soaps. I wondered to husband how to do it. He suggested I ask elderly lady. "Excuse me." She told me she was collecting the bright green weed to eat. You had tow ash it very carefully and well, put it in the microwave for 30 secs and it was good with pasta. She also had been collecting rock samphire and gave me some to taste. Delicious, like a succulent parley. I went where she suggested to collect some, which I mixed with tomatoes for a salad. Husband and I liked it but not the grand children. Someone told me how her grandmother in law used to have it in a soup with hot milk.

The seaweed was even less successful, so I think I'll find out how to use it in soap instead of eating it.

Husband's unbirthday present

Husband is about to retire. Having been on three days a week since his 65th birthday last September, he is going down to zero days at the end of the month. This means he will lose the accoutrements that come with employment, like a laptop and a mobile phone.

Daughter #3 has bought him a mobile phone, set it up, put useful phone numbers on it and it arrived today. See -

Baby musician plays guitar

Youngest grand child is such a happy child, secure in a loving family with confident and content siblings. Here's a video of her listening to her musician uncle as he experiments with my old guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0es8YNkuvNM

What's amazing is that such a young child can sit and concentrate for so long when so many children even years older than her cannot. It must be something to do with her ease, her comfort, her health, her security in her family.

Family video

Oldest granddaughter went around with the flip video and took this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CNtqbMa0ok

How to make Xmas pud

Husband was stirring the Christmas pudding today. I took a video. See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw6Ozk5IUnM
and later I'll work out and remember how to make this a direct link.

Belly dancing

This is Waly Waly, the dance that our teacher, Shiraz, has been teaching us and thinks we can all do. Ha!


I'm not going to publish this, although our teacher's happy about me taking the video. I don't have her written permission, and more important I don't know the copy restrictions on the music that she's dancing to. It's a pity because I'd like to have somewhere to watch and learn what she's doing and my home computer's not fast enough to display it. And I've not got the space left on the default drive where the software insists on keeping .

Trains

Husband has been busy making trains run on track. The video is one and a half minutes, and a few megabytes.

Photos of Kerala

There should now be photos and even a video of our stay in Kerala. See

• Homeward via Mumbai
• Kumarakom continued
• Houseboat & lake
• Houseboat (Jan 6th continued)
• Kummily to Kumarakom
• Our driver
• Kumarakom
• Lazy day
• To Thekkady
• Tea plantation at Munnar
• To Cochin
• Kerala - Cochin

Any other photos not published here (or not publishable such as the demonstration of the outside shower) will be available elsewhere.

Lazy day

Jan 5th
This was lazy day with a morning trip to a spice garden, reinforcing some of what we’d learnt before about plants like black pepper and vanilla - see photos - but also introducing the periwinkle – source of the cancer therapy drug, Vencristin, which was used on my HL 16 years ago, and the banana flower (see photo), which looks like a pointed cabbage, and can be cooked in a similar way.




After lunch we spent the afternoon in our room or on the balcony reading until a sudden afternoon rain storm, which made the dirt road outside the hotel a quagmire through which we picked our way to see an hour’s demonstration of Kalari (this is a martial art, perhaps the first one, but certainly one of the oldest). Here is a short video of it - no sound.